Stoicism

Stoicism, a school of thought that flourished in Greek and Roman antiquity. It was one of the loftiest and most sublime philosophies in the record of Western civilization. In urging participation in human affairs, Stoics have always believed that the goal of all inquiry is to provide a mode of conduct characterized by tranquillity of mind and certainty of moral worth.

Nature and scope of Stoicism

For the early Stoic philosopher, as for all the post-Aristotelian schools, knowledge and its pursuit are no longer held to be ends in themselves. The Hellenistic Age was a time of transition, and the Stoic philosopher was perhaps its most influential representative. A new culture was in the making. The heritage of an earlier period, with Athens as its intellectual leader, was to continue, but to undergo many changes. If, as with Socrates, to know is to know oneself, rationality as the sole means by which something outside of the self might be achieved may be said to be the hallmark of Stoic belief. As a Hellenistic philosophy, Stoicism presented an ars vitae, a way of accommodation for people to whom the human condition no longer appeared as the mirror of a uniform, calm, and ordered cosmos. Reason alone could reveal the constancy of cosmic order and the originative source of unyielding value; thus, reason became the true model for human existence. To the Stoic, virtue is an inherent feature of the world, no less inexorable in relation to humans than are the laws of nature.

The Stoics believed that perception is the basis of true knowledge. In logic, their comprehensive presentation of the topic is derived from perception, yielding not only the judgment that knowledge is possible but also that certainty is possible, on the analogy of the incorrigibility of perceptual experience. To them, the world is composed of material things, with some few exceptions (e.g., meaning), and the irreducible element in all things is right reason, which pervades the world as divine fire. Things, such as material, or corporeal, bodies, are governed by this reason or fate, in which virtue is inherent. The world in its awesome entirety is so ruled as to exhibit a grandeur of orderly arrangement that can only serve as a standard for humankind in the regulation and ordering of life. Thus, the goal of humans is to live according to nature, in agreement with the world design.

Stoic moral theory is also based on the view that the world, as one great city, is a unity. Humans, as world citizens, have an obligation and loyalty to all things in that city. They must play an active role in world affairs, remembering that the world exemplifies virtue and right action. Thus, moral worth, duty, and justice are singularly Stoic emphases, together with a certain sternness of mind. For the moral person neither is merciful nor shows pity, because each suggests a deviation from duty and from the fated necessity that rules the world. Nonetheless—with its loftiness of spirit and its emphasis on the individual’s essential worth—the themes of universal brotherhood and the benevolence of divine nature make Stoicism one of the most appealing of philosophies.

Its chief competitors in antiquity were: (1) Epicureanism, with its doctrine of a life of withdrawal in contemplation and escape from worldly affairs and its belief that pleasure, as the absence of pain, is the goal of humans; (2) Skepticism, which rejected certain knowledge in favour of local beliefs and customs, in the expectation that those guides would provide the quietude and serenity that the dogmatic philosopher (e.g., the Stoic) could not hope to achieve; and (3) Christianity, with its hope of personal salvation provided by an appeal to faith as an immanent aid to human understanding and by the beneficent intervention of a merciful God.

Along with its rivals, Stoicism enabled the individual to better order his own life and to avoid the excesses of human nature that promote disquietude and anxiety. It was easily the most influential of the schools from the time of its founding through the first two centuries ce, and it continued to have a marked effect on later thought. During the late Roman and medieval periods, elements of Stoic moral theory were known and used in the formulation of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theories of humanity and nature, of the state and society, and of law and sanctions—e.g., in the works of Cicero, Roman statesman and orator; in Lactantius, often called the “Christian Cicero”; and in Boethius, a scholar transitional to the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance, Stoic political and moral theory became more popular to theorists of natural law and political authority and of educational reform—e.g., in Hugo Grotius, a Dutch jurist and statesman, and in Philipp Melanchthon, a major Reformation scholar. In the 20th century, Stoicism became popular again for its insistence on the value of the individual and the place of value in a world of strife and uncertainty—e.g., in existentialism and in Neo-orthodox Protestanttheology. Stoicism also played an important role in reassessments of the history of logic.

Ancient Stoicism

With the death of Aristotle (322 bce) and that of Alexander the Great (323 bce), the greatness of the life and thought of the Greek city-state (polis) ended. With Athens no longer the centre of worldly attraction, its claim to urbanity and cultural prominence passed on to other cities—to Rome, to Alexandria, and to Pergamum. The Greek polis gave way to larger political units; local rule was replaced by that of distant governors. The earlier distinction between Greek and barbarian was destroyed; provincial and tribal loyalties were broken apart, first by Alexander and then by Roman legions. The loss of freedom by subject peoples further encouraged a deterioration of the concept of the freeman and resulted in the rendering of obligation and service to a ruler whose moral force held little meaning. The earlier intimacy of order, cosmic and civic, was now replaced by social and political disorder, and traditional mores gave way to uncertain and transient values.

Stoicism had its beginnings in a changing world, in which earlier codes of conduct and ways of understanding proved no longer suitable. But it was also influenced by tenets of the older schools. The earliest Greek philosophers, the Milesians, had called attention to cosmic order and the beauty of nature. Later, the monistParmenides of Elea stressed the power of reason and thought, whereas Heracleitus of Ephesus, precursor of the philosophy of becoming, had alluded to the constancy of change and the omnipresence of divine fire, which illumined all things. A deeper understanding of human nature came with Socrates, symbol of the philosopher, who personified sophia and sapientia (Greek and Latin: “wisdom”). Of the several schools of philosophy stemming from Socrates, the Cynic and Megarian schools were influential in the early development of Stoic doctrine: the Cynics for their emphasis on the simple life, unadorned and free of emotional involvement; and the Megarians for their study of dialectic, logical form, and paradoxes.

Stoicism takes its name from the place where its founder, Zeno of Citium (Cyprus), customarily lectured—the Stoa Poikile (Painted Colonnade). Zeno, who flourished in the early 3rd century bce, showed in his own doctrines the influence of earlier Greek attitudes, particularly those mentioned above. He was apparently well versed in Platonic thought, for he had studied at Plato’s Academy both with Xenocrates of Chalcedon and with Polemon of Athens, successive heads of the Academy. Zeno was responsible for the division of philosophy into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics. He also established the central Stoic doctrines in each part, so that later Stoics were to expand rather than to change radically the views of the founder. With some exceptions (in the field of logic), Zeno thus provided the following themes as the essential framework of Stoic philosophy: logic as an instrument and not as an end in itself; human happiness as a product of life according to nature; physical theory as providing the means by which right actions are to be determined; perception as the basis of certain knowledge; the wise person as the model of human excellence; Platonic forms—the abstract entities in which things of the same genus “participate”—as being unreal; true knowledge as always accompanied by assent; the fundamental substance of all existing things as being a divine fire, the universal principles of which are (1) passive (matter) and (2) active (reason inherent in matter); belief in a world conflagration and renewal; belief in the corporeality of all things; belief in the fated causality that necessarily binds all things; cosmopolitanism, or cultural outlook transcending narrower loyalties; and the obligation, or duty, to choose only those acts that are in accord with nature, all other acts being a matter of indifference.

Cleanthes of Assos, who succeeded Zeno as head of the school, is best known for his Hymn to Zeus, which movingly describes Stoic reverence for the cosmic order and the power of universal reason and law. The third head of the school, Chrysippus of Soli, who lived to the end of the 3rd century, was perhaps the greatest and certainly the most productive of the early Stoics. He devoted his considerable energies to the almost complete development of the Zenonian themes in logic, physics, and ethics. In logic particularly, he defended against the Megarian logicians and the Skeptics such concepts as certain knowledge, comprehensive presentation, proposition and argument, truth and its criterion, and assent. His work in propositional logic, in which unanalyzed propositions joined by connectives are studied, made important contributions to the history of ancient logic and was of particular relevance to modern developments in logic.

In physics, Chrysippus was responsible for the attempt to show that fate and free will are not mutually exclusiveconceptual features of Stoic doctrine. He further distinguished between “whole” and “all,” or “universe,” arguing that the whole is the world, while the all is the external void together with the world. Zeno’s view of the origin of human beings as providentially generated by “fiery reason” out of matter was expanded by Chrysippus to include the concept of self-preservation, which governs all living things. Another earlier view (Zeno’s), that of nature as a model for life, was amplified first by Cleanthes and then by Chrysippus. The Zenonian appeal to life “according to nature” had evidently been left vague, because to Cleanthes it seemed necessary to speak of life in accord with nature conceived as the world at large (the cosmos), whereas Chrysippus distinguished between world nature and human nature. Thus, to do good is to act in accord with both human and universal nature. Chrysippus also expanded the Stoic view that seminal reasons (germinal principles) were the impetus for motion in living things.

He established firmly that logic and (especially) physics are necessary and are means for the differentiation of goods and evils. Thus, a knowledge of physics (or theology) is required before an ethics can be formulated. Indeed, physics and logic find their value chiefly in this very purpose. Chrysippus covered almost every feature of Stoic doctrine and treated each so thoroughly that the essential features of the school were to change relatively little after his time.

Later Roman Stoicism

The Middle Stoa, which flourished in the 2nd and early 1st centuries bce, was dominated chiefly by two philosophers of Rhodes: Panaetius, its founder, and his disciplePoseidonius. Panaetius organized a Stoic school in Rome before returning to Athens, and Poseidonius was largely responsible for an emphasis on the religious features of the doctrine. Both were antagonistic to the ethical doctrines of Chrysippus, who, they believed, had strayed too far from the Platonic and Aristotelian roots of Stoicism. It may have been because of the considerable time that Panaetius and Poseidonius lived in Rome that the Stoa there turned so much of its emphasis to the moral and religious themes within the Stoic doctrine. Panaetius was highly regarded by Cicero, who used him as a model for his own work. Poseidonius, who had been a disciple of Panaetius in Athens, taught Cicero at his school at Rhodes and later went to Rome and remained there for a time with Cicero. If Poseidonius admired Plato and Aristotle, he was particularly interested—unlike most of his school—in the study of natural and providential phenomena. In presenting the Stoic system in the second book of De natura deorum (45 bce; On the Nature of the Gods), Cicero most probably followed Poseidonius. Because his master, Panaetius, was chiefly concerned with concepts of duty and obligation, it was his studies that served as a model for the De officiis (44 bce; On Duties) of Cicero. Hecaton, another of Panaetius’s students and an active Stoic philosopher, also stressed similar ethical themes.

If Chrysippus is to be commended for his diligence in defending Stoic logic and epistemology against the Skepticism of the New Academy (3rd–2nd century bce), it was chiefly Panaetius and Poseidonius who were responsible for the widespread popularity of Stoicism in Rome. It was precisely their turning of doctrine to themes in moral philosophy and natural science that appealed to the intensely practical Romans. The times perhaps demanded such interests, and with them Stoicism was to become predominantly a philosophy for the individual, showing how—given the vicissitudes of life—one might be stoical. Law, world citizenship, nature, and the benevolent workings of providence and the divine reason were the principal areas of interest of Stoicism at this time.

Such tendencies toward practicality are also well illustrated in the later period of the school (in the first two centuries ce) in the writings of Lucius Seneca, a Roman statesman; of Epictetus, a former slave; and of Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor. Both style and content in Seneca’s Libri morales (Moral Essays) and Epistulae morales (Moral Letters) reinforce the new direction in Stoic thought. The Encheiridion (Manual) of Epictetus and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius furthered the sublime and yet personal consolation of the Stoic message and increasingly showed the strength of its rivalry to the burgeoning power of the new Christianity. The mark of a guide, of the religious teacher, is preeminent in these writings. It is difficult to establish with any precision, however, the extent of Stoic influence by the time of the first half of the 2nd century ce. So popular had these ideas become that many specifically Stoic terms (viz., right reason, comprehension, assent, indifference, logos, and natural law), as well as the notion of the wise person, were commonly used in debate and intellectual disputes.

Stoic elements in Pauline and patristic thought

There is much disagreement as to the measure of Stoic influence on the writings of St. Paul the Apostle. At Tarsus, Paul certainly had opportunities for hearing Stoic lectures on philosophy. And it may be that his discussion of nature and the teaching of it (1 Corinthians 11:14) is Stoic in origin, for it has a parallel in the Manual of Epictetus (1.16, 10). Although not a Stoic technical term, syneidēsis, which Paul used as “conscience,” was generally employed by Stoic philosophers. In 1 Corinthians 13 and in the report of Paul’s speech at Athens (Acts 17), there is much that is Hellenistic, more than a little tinged by Stoic elements—e.g., the arguments concerning the natural belief in God and the belief that human existence is in God.

The assimilation of Stoic elements by the Church Fathers was generally better understood by the 4th century. Stoic influence can be seen, for example, in the relation between reason and the passions in the works of St. Ambrose, one of the great scholars of the church, and of Marcus Minucius Felix, a Christian Apologist. Each took a wealth of ideas from Stoic morality as Cicero had interpreted it in De officiis. In general, whereas the emerging Christian morality affirmed its originality, it also assimilated much of the pagan literature, the more congenial elements of which were essentially Stoic.

Earlier, in the 3rd century, Quintus Tertullian, often called the father of Latin Christian literature, seems to have been versed in Stoic philosophy—e.g., in his theory of the agreement between the supernatural and the human soul, in his use of the Stoic tenet that from a truth there follow truths, and in his employment of the idea of universal consent. Even in his polemical writings, which reveal an unrelenting hostility to pagan philosophy, Tertullian showed a fundamental grasp and appreciation of such Stoic themes as the world logos and the relation of body to soul. This is well illustrated in his argument against the Stoics, particularly on their theme that God is a corporeal being and identified with reason as inherent in matter—also to be found in his polemics against Marcion, father of a heretical Christian sect (the Marcionites), and against Hermogenes of Tarsus, author of an important digest of rhetoric. Yet, in his doctrine of the Word, he appealed directly to Zeno and Cleanthes. Another important polemic against the Stoics is found in the treatiseContra Celsum, by Origen, the most influential Greek theologian of the 3rd century, in which he argued at some length against Stoic doctrines linking God to matter.

Also, St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in the 3rd century, revealed the currency of Stoic views—e.g., in his Ad Demetrianum (To Demetrius), a denunciation of an enemy to Christianity, in which Cyprian castigates the ill treatment of slaves (who, no less than their masters, are formed of the same matter and endowed with the same soul and live according to the same law). The beliefs in human brotherhood and in the world as a great city, commonly found in early Christian literature, were current Stoic themes. The Christian attitude appears in what St. Paul said of baptism: “You are all sons of God through Faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26–27).

Stoicism in medieval and modern philosophy

During the period when Christian institutions and doctrines were developing (230–1450 ce), Stoicism continued to play a popular role. The De consolatione philosophiae (524; Consolation of Philosophy) of Boethius (died 524/525 ce) was widely known and appreciated as a discourse on the mysterious questions of the nature of good and evil, of fortune, chance, or freedom, and of divine foreknowledge. If the plan of Boethius was to serve as an interpreter of Plato and Aristotle, he succeeded only in working through some logical theories of Aristotle, together with several commentaries on those theories. In the Consolatione, however, the themes are quite different; in the fifth book, for example, he attempted to resolve the apparent difficulty of reconciling human freedom (free will) with the divine foreknowledge, a problem that among Stoic thinkers—though by no means uniquely among them—had been in general currency for a long time. This work of emancipation from worldly travail through the glories of reason and philosophy, which included Stoic doctrines as found in the writings of Cicero and Seneca, was much more influential for later medieval thought than that of Lactantius, of the late 3rd to early 4th century, who was largely concerned with the writing of a history of religion—a summary statement of Christian doctrine and life from earliest times. Lactantius also wrote a not unimportant work called De ira Dei (313; On the Anger of God). It poses a problem of how to deal with the essentially Greek, or philosophical, view that God cannot feel anger because he is not subject to passions and that apatheia (“apathy,” or “imperturbableness”) is not merely the mark of the wise person but also a divine attribute. That view, which had been most thoroughly developed among Stoic thinkers and particularly by Epictetus, raised a peculiarly Christian problem, the concern of the power of God to reward the righteous and punish the transgressor; thus, it challenged the very idea of providence. Other manifestations of anthropopathism, the attributing of human feelings to God, had also been charged against the early Christian religionists; and the writers of the time—Lactantius and Tertullian among them—took great pains to refute the largely Stoic formulations of these charges. Although the refutations took the form—in St. Augustine, for example—of denying that the wrath of God is a perturbation of the soul and of holding that it is rather a judgment, the concept of the divine essence excludes all passions. Within the monastic tradition, there remained more than a residue of concern over apathy as a divine attribute and as a model for the truly religious.

Other significant Stoic influences appeared in medieval discussions of the popular origin of political authority and of the distinctions made in law between jus naturale (natural law), jus gentium (law of nations), jus civile (civil law)—doctrines of Stoic origin—found in 3rd-century Roman juridical texts gathered together by St. Isidore of Sevilla (died 636 ce), a Spanish encyclopaedist and theologian. The Stoic belief—as against Aristotle—that humans are by nature equal was an integral part of the knowledge that certain rules of law are universally recognized, laws that all people might naturally follow. In this way, the Romans—whose genius lay in organization and in law—fostered the conception of natural, or common, law, which reason was supposed to make evident to all people. Thus, in the second half of the 11th century, the Stoic texts of Cicero and Seneca became important doctrinal sources for the initial discussions of social and political philosophy. These early theories of law, of natural equality, and of the rights of prince and populace were to become the basis for 13th-century systems of social and political privilege and obligation.

In the 12th century, John of Salisbury, an English critical scholar, produced, in his Policraticus (1159), the first complete attempt at a philosophy of the state since Classical times. Stoic doctrines of natural law, society, state, and providence were important elements in his effort to construct a social philosophy on ethical and metaphysical principles. The impact of these doctrines and the lengthy history of their use in the earlier Middle Ages can also be found in the views of St. Thomas Aquinas on the philosophy of the state and of human nature.

Revival of Stoicism in modern times

If the influence of Stoic doctrines during the Middle Ages was largely restricted to the resolution of problems of social and political significance, it remained for the Renaissance, in its passion for the rediscovery of Greek and Roman antiquity, to provide a basis for the rebirth of Stoic views in logic, epistemology, and metaphysics, as well as the documentation of the more familiar Stoic doctrines in ethics and politics. Late in the 16th century, Justus Lipsius, a Flemish scholar and Latin humanist, was responsible for the first restatement of Stoicism as a defensible and thoroughgoing (Christian) philosophy of human nature. His treatisesDe constantia (1584; On Constancy) and Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (1589; Six Books of Politics or Political Instruction) were widely known in many editions and translations. His defense of Stoic doctrine in Manuductio ad Stoicam Philosophiam (1604; Digest of Stoic Philosophy) and Physiologia Stoicorum (1604; Physics of the Stoics) provided the basis for the considerable Stoic influence during the Renaissance. About the turn of the 17th century, Guillaume du Vair, a French lawyer and Christian philosopher, made Stoic moral philosophy popular, while Pierre Charron, a French theologian and skeptic, utilized Stoic themes in De la sagesse (1601; Of Wisdom), as did the skeptic Michel de Montaigne in his Essais (1580; Essays). Through the work of Lipsius, Stoic doctrines were to influence the thought of Francis Bacon, a precursor of modern philosophy of science, and, later, the De l’esprit des lois (1748; The Spirit of Laws), by the political theorist Charles-Louis, baron de Montesquieu. In the continuing and relentless war against the Aristotelianism of the later Middle Ages, the doctrines of Stoicism influenced many prominent figures of the Renaissance and Reformation periods.

Pietro Pomponazzi, an Aristotelian of early 16th-century Italy, in defending an anti-Scholastic Aristotelianism against the Averroists, who viewed the world as a strictly necessitarian and fated order, adopted the Stoic view of providence and human freedom. The 15th-century humanist Leonardo Bruni absorbed Stoic views on reason, fate, and free will. Pantheism, the view that God and nature are unitary in the sense that God is an impersonal being, and naturalism, the view that nothing is supernatural, both of which identify God with the cosmos and ascribe to it a life process of which the world soul is the principle, were widely held Renaissance notions. Such a pantheistic naturalism was advocated—though from diverse standpoints—by Francesco Patrizi, a versatile Platonist, and by Giordano Bruno, defender of an infinite cosmos; and in both authors the inspiration and source were fundamentally Stoic. In the development of a philosophy of public law based upon a study of human nature, Stoic elements are found in the Utopia (1516), by Thomas More, and the De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625; On the Law of War and Peace), by Hugo Grotius. The latter work is one of the most famous Renaissance treatises on the theory of natural and social rights.

Another Stoic influence of considerable importance in the tradition of Christian humanism was the view that all religions have a common basis of truths concerning God—a universal Deism. Among those who favoured such a view were Zwingli and Desiderius Erasmus, the great Renaissance humanist and scholar. More and Grotius also laid special stress on that view, and its influence was felt in the moral, social, and even the artistic life of the 16th century. Later, Herbert of Cherbury, often called the father of Deism, further developed the idea of religious peace and the reduction of opposing religious views to common elements. This view became one of the most popular ideas of the 17th century.

Philipp Melanchthon also cultivated humanism and the philosophy of antiquity as a basis for a reborn Christianity. Although Aristotle was his chief inspiration, Melanchthon made telling use of the Stoic theory of knowledge, with its notions of innate principles and the natural light of reason, which teach the great truths of metaphysical and moral order. Stoicism thus became the basis for the natural-law theory, which holds that the state is of immediately divine origin and independent of the church—a Protestant view opposed by Roman Catholic writers.

The Cartesian revolution in thought in the 17th century brought forward several Stoic notions: that morality consists of obedience to the law of reason, which God has deposited within humans; that ethics presupposes a knowledge of nature, because humans must learn to know their place in the world, for only then may they act rightly; that self-examination is the foundation of ethics; and that the innateness and commonality of truths bespeak the view that only thoughts and the will belong properly to humans, for the body is a part of the material world. Such views were particularly developed by René Descartes, often hailed as the father of modern philosophy, in his dualism of mind (or soul) and body.

Benedict de Spinoza, a freethinking Jewish rationalist, made similar use of Stoic views on the nature of humans and the world. That aspect of Spinoza’s thought that is debatably labeled pantheist is essentially Stoic in character. Together with the Cartesians, Spinoza insisted upon the importance of internal and right reason as the sole means by which to attain to indubitable truths and to the possibility of human freedom.

Blaise Pascal, a French scientist and religious philosopher, also was sympathetic to Cartesian conceptions of human nature. His religious thought retained the Cartesian and Stoic insistence on the independence of human reason, holding that humans are fundamentally thinking beings, innately capable of making right decisions. However, there is an important and crucial difference and conflict between Pascal’s views and those of Spinoza and the Cartesians: for Pascal, though the use of (the Stoic) right reason might result in proofs and demonstrations that lead to the God of truth, it would never lead to the God of love, the one true God. Thus, the Stoic exaltation of reason to an entity in its own right—indeed, to a divine entity—as exemplified among the Cartesians and in the thought of Spinoza, was rejected by Pascal in the Jansenist Christianity that he finally adopted—a rejection that, because it also repudiated free will, distinguishes Pascal from those who held Stoic as well as alternative conceptions of human freedom and responsibility.

Christianity in general, in spite of striking contrasts with Stoicism, has found elements within it that parallel its own position. As the Stoic, for example, feels safe and protected in the rational care of some immanent providence, so the Christian senses that a transcendent though incarnate and loving God is looking after him. And in general, Stoicism has played a great part throughout the ages in the theological formulation of Christian thought as well as in the actual realization of Christian ideals.

Contemporary philosophy has borrowed from Stoicism, at least in part, its conviction that human beings must be conceived as being closely and essentially connected with the world. And contemporary humanism still contains some obviously Stoic elements, such as its belief in the solidarity of all peoples based upon their common nature, and in the primacy of reason. It is perhaps just because Stoicism has never become a full-fledged philosophical system that, many centuries after the dissolution of the Stoic school, fundamental themes of its philosophy have emerged again and again, and many have become incorporated into modern thinking.